Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Spectator’s recent editorial on ROTC speaks of Columbia and other universities as having “banned” ROTC in the period of the Vietnam War. This creates a misleading impression. To ban is to unconditionally prohibit in all circumstances. A Columbia faculty-student report of 1969 did not recommend banning ROTC, nor did any selective, private institution do so at that time. Indeed, Stanford’s and Harvard’s faculty explicitly voted against a ban.

It is more accurate to say that these institutions effectively barred ROTC by requiring changes in its curriculum, credit arrangements, and commanding officers’ faculty status. In the charged atmosphere of the time, the strict application of existing legislation made it impossible for the military services to accept these changes. As a passage in the Columbia report of 1969 put it: “The role of the [Vietnam] War has been to weaken ... exceptions from normal academic practices. ... We regret that we did not [act] before the present mood ... but we cannot refuse to correct an academically-irregular situation merely because that mood exists.”

Today, ROTC programs at MIT, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania have resolved many or all of the curricular problems of four decades ago. After the repeal or effective reform of legal prohibitions against service by homosexuals, cooperative good will by Columbia and the military can resolve the remaining obstacles. Meanwhile, both should make clear their intentions and hope to do so.

Allan Silver

Professor Emeritus

Department of Sociology